The toll of service climate on employees: an emotional labor perspective

Purpose The existing research on service climate emphasizes its benefits for customers, employees and organizational outcomes. Service climate translates into organizational expectations from service employees to continuously show appropriate emotions when engaging with clients. However, these expectations may also take a toll on employees, who need to regulate their emotions using emotional labor strategies in order to conform to the organization's expectations. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the service climate and employees' use of emotional labor strategies, and investigate how service employees' service knowledge, skills, abilities and other attributes (KSAOs) affect this relationship. Design/methodology/approach In two separate studies, one with a sample including 100 nurses working in 15 wards, and the other comprised of 244 luxury hotel chain employees working in 39 departments, participants were surveyed about their perceptions of the service climate and their use of emotional labor strategies. In addition, each participant's direct manager assessed his/her service KSAOs. Findings Results demonstrated a positive association between the service climate and the use of surface emotional labor strategies for employees who had limited service KSAOs. Originality/value While service climate depicts the core values and beliefs of the organization about service, and helps employees to translate them into behaviors that promote high service performance, the current paper points to a potential toll it may have on employees well-being due to their use of surface emotional labor strategies.